Walking Ahead

The school helper entered the classroom V-B. Alka had recently joined
in for the position. The room was empty. The students had gone to the
computer lab of the school. Alka looked around at the light-yellow
walls of the room with boards displaying different creative efforts by
the children, even the doors of the cupboards were not spared from
them.

The bags and water bottles were neatly arranged along the desks and
chairs, as the students had been instructed to do when they left the
classroom in between the school day.

The breeze that entered from one of the slightly open windows shook
the light pink curtains. The light of the Sun within a classroom is a
sight which one tends to remember for a very long time in their life.

The notebooks Alka had been sent to bring were neatly piled up one
upon the other on the teacher’s table. Alka counted the notebooks
first. Her eyes fell on the 85 inches screen of the smartboard. She
felt a sadness within.

“This is Mr Dube, he makes and sells blackboards,” Alka’s father, a
small grocery shop owner, had told a little school going Alka. Alka
took great pride in knowing someone who made blackboards, the one
thing all students in the school saw in the school every day from the
start to the end of their school lives.

‘What will happen to Mr Dube’s business when this arrives at our
village schools,’ Alka wondered, looking at the smartboard.

Back in Alka’s village, the schools weren’t as fancy as the one she
was working in, but the students did smile and laugh a lot more. Most
of Alka’s friends did not think of a life beyond the village and at
most after marriage they went away to a town or another village or
else they just spent the rest of their life here with occasional trips
of few days to other places.

“I want to go to the nearby city for college, and try to make a future
there,” Alka told her parents one day after completing her school.

Alka’s mother required a great amount of convincing to understand,
“Why can’t you be like the other girls in the village and think of a
life here? Do you have any idea what others will say when they learn
you want to go to the city to study and have a life there? The people
there are not so good. It is very risky.”

“A city has many facilities and a better future. It can give us a
better life than the one we have here,” Alka reasoned, but her mother
did not reply. Alka looked at her father who had an expression of
greater understanding of what Alka wanted.

“I will think about it,” he said.

Alka’s uncle arrived the next week from the city.

“I will look after her. You don’t need to worry. The city definitely
offers much more than what we get here.”

“But what about money, city life is expensive, I am not sure I can
afford for her to study there. You have your family to look after as
well, taking in another person to live can be difficult for you too,”
said Alka’s father.

“Well, she can work and study at the same time, she can apply for a
distance education course and meanwhile also work to earn, I will
manage the rest of the deficiencies.” Alka’s uncle replied.

This is how Alka came to the city and found the work of school helper
and meanwhile she also studied at a college.

Alka picked up the notebooks and headed out of the classroom.

‘One day, I will walk into that classroom, not to get something, but
to teach.’ Alka thought as she walked away from the classroom.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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